May 1 – Spring in Detroit, Spring in Maine

Today’s Post  –
“Almost mid-May, I watch the spring come slow-
ly day by day . . . ”

Traveling north-south, south-north during season-changing time lets trees and ground plants show their stuff to visitors.  Readers from Detroit, where I live this May morning,  will recognize how much farther “north” it is to mid-Maine.  Sometimes if we get lucky and have time, we can catch three or four spring-unfolding times with a little traveling.

Poet Rhonda Neshama Waller offers readers to her south a taste of what down here was weeks ago — “warm sun, after a week of rain, hail, snow.”   In Detroit, this year, spring lags a little; mostly May’s first ten days will top out in the low 60ºs; still our 1st tulips cooperate with daffodils to splash our courtyard with once-a-year fresh colors.   This morning, too, the tell-tale smell of fresh cut grace makes its presence known for this year’s first time.    Which part of spring in a northern place is more beautiful, this early delicate teasing or a head-spinning explosion of  leaves and a vast new presence of mature flowers everywhere?  “Yes.”

john sj

“Spring Comes to Maine” – Sonnet May 10

Almost mid-May, I watch the spring come slow-
ly day by day, pale lime-green moving up
from Sheepscot Valley towards my mountaintop,
up here the leaves still furled. Two eagles flew,
late afternoon, just past the east window.
Today, wild violets everywhere I step,
bright golden dandelions on the slope,
warm sun, after a week of rain, hail, snow.
Remembering to match my pace to this,
to note the details of each day’s new turn,
the distant hills still patched with lavender,
deep green of fir, the changing moments pass.
For dinner I’ll have buttered fiddlehead fern,
The daffodils are opening in the grass.

“Spring Comes to Maine” by Rhoda Neshama Waller. Presented here by poet submission.

Art credit: “Two adults from the local Bald Eagle family,” photograph taken August 19, 2012, near Pembroke, Maine (USA), perhaps.

April 30, 2019 courtyard in the Jesuit house – U Detroit Mercy

This entry was posted in Poetry. Bookmark the permalink.